Friday, January 6, 2012

Why FDR was America's Worst President

(Author's note 1: To quote George Bernard Shaw, I apologize that this post is so long; I did not have time to make it shorter.)

Introduction

Recently, President Obama infamously asserted his
presidential accomplishments to be the fourth greatest of all time. But while
that’s surely vain and false, what’s even more false is his list of the top
three: Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon Baines Johnson. I consider Lincoln a tremendous (although imperfect) president, but FDR and LBJ have done more to harm this country than any other two men (with the possible
exception of John Maynard Keynes). In particular, I hold FDR to be the worst
president our nation has ever had.

This probably runs contrary to most of what you’ve been
taught in school. Roosevelt was a tremendously influential president, who had
stellar oratorical skills and a great deal of power. He was immensely popular
in his day, and won four terms in office (perhaps he’d have won more if he
hadn’t died in office). His face graces the US dime. He is often credited with ending the Great Depression
and guiding the nation through WWII. These accomplishments, combined with his
popularity and how he revolutionized the office of the presidency, are often
cited in the argument that he is the greatest president of all time.

But the truth is, our country would be much better off today
if FDR had never been elected and his ideology had never been implemented and
spread. This is true even when we leave aside the realization that he did not end the Great Depression; truly,he only prolonged it. But more
important to Roosevelt’s legacy than the results in that individual decade is
the impact his presidency has had today. And today FDR’s presence is most felt by
the precedent he set that it was okay for presidents to trample all over the
only thing that gives them any right to power at all: the constitution. In
short, FDR was a tyrant.

The best way to evaluate a president is compare the job he did with the job he was supposed to do. How well did he fulfill his job
description? First, we must determine what he accomplished by comparing the the responsibilities given to him with the
responsibilities he met. Next, we must inspect how he accomplishedthose thingsby comparing the powers granted to him with the powers he actually exercised. When we do this for FDR, we discover he was our worst president
because the job he did was not the job the constitution establishes for the
president. He did not fulfill his job description. He fell short of his responsibilities to faithfully execute the
rulings of the other branches, and to respect the system of checks and balances. He fell short of his duty to use only the legitimate powers authorized to him in the constitution while doing so. And he did all of this to such a greater extent, on such a larger scale than
any president had ever done before him. By doing so he set the tragic precedent that the constitution could and should be ignored by future presidents as well. Therefore, he was our worst president.

***

Redefining the Arrogance of Power

The first thing to understand about President
Roosevelt was that from most personal accounts, he was incredibly, pompously vain. The truth is that most modern
presidents are. Think about that job for a moment. You can allocate or cut off
funds to any executive agency you don’t like, and then redistribute that
funding to any other agency. You can tinker with and eventually propose the
entire US budget. At the push of a button, you can drop a nuclear bomb anywhere
in the world that you so choose - no permission required. You can deploy troops
anywhere in the world and have them fight and kill anyone you like, without
trial and without questions. If it suits your fancy, you can torture them. You
can individually and exclusively negotiate and sign agreements with the
governments of any other nation on earth. You can appoint as many executive
officials as you like, and then give them executive orders to carry out your
bidding. You can use signing statements to “interpret” any law passed by
Congress into whatever interpretation suits your agenda, and can scour the
dicta of Supreme Court decisions to interpret their rulings as you see fit. If
anybody tries to stop you, you can have them arrested for treason; if anyone is
arrested who you feel should not be, you can pardon them immediately. You are,
in short, the most powerful man in the most powerful country on earth.

Only one man can have that job at a time. In order to become
president, one must first decide to run. That decision is no casual happenstance.
Only a certain type of person makes such a decision. To most people, the
presidency would not be a fun job. Could you imagine being president yourself? Imagine the media microscope of the most
high profile celebrity in the world. Every action you take is analyzed by
millions. Every expression you utter is dissected by the media incessantly. You have more responsibility and more work to do than anyone, and you are ultimately
responsible for everything the government does. You must decide that you want all that power and attention for yourself. This is only an
attractive proposition to a certain type of person: a person who’s highly
narcissistic, highly ambitious, who loves to be in charge
and who loves to be in the limelight. The president must honestly believe that he or she is the single most qualified person in the country to take on that
responsibility. No matter how qualified they actually are, that takes a certain
amount of vanity.

Then, the would-be president must dedicate an entire year of their lives to tirelessly
giving speeches, placing advertisements, and campaigning across the country. They must convince millions of other people that they ought to be
granted that power, because they are more qualified than anyone else in the
world. They must seek the endorsements of famous, powerful people. To succeed they must be cunning and cutthroat. They must present only their strengths, and hide all of their weaknesses. They must never tire of hearing their own voice, or of hearing massive crowds cheer them and chant their name. They must dedicate every moment of their attention to inflating their own public image.

Think of how arrogant somebody must be to do all that, to decide
that they both want to be and ought to be the most powerful person on earth. Imagine
that ego. And then recognize that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ego was far larger. For Roosevelt
did not make the decision to run for an existing office which held such immense
powers; rather, he made the decision to bestow those powers upon himself. Remember when I listed all the crazy-powerful things the president can do a few paragraphs ago? What many
don’t realize is that none of those powers belonged to the president
when FDR ran for office! Most of those powers were invented out of thin
air by Roosevelt himself, for himself. At least modern presidents know that
somebody must inherit that office and assume those abilities; they must merely
ask themselves “if somebody has to do it, why can’t it be me?” But in
Roosevelt’s time, nobody had to do it. Roosevelt simply wanted to do it, so he
systematically, brilliantly, and dangerously seized the ability. Even worse, by
buying off the press to portray him as a hero, he set the precedent that this
behavior not only could be done by future presidents, but should be. The next section will detail how he did it.

***

Seizing Power

One of Roosevelt's first power grabs involved an obscure, oft-forgotten office called the Bureau of the Budget (today, it’s
called the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB). This Bureau had been
created in 1921 to track government expenditures. Previously, each bureau had
its own budget, and nobody even bothered to check whether the sum of these budgets was covered by federal revenue! If
we ended up spending more than we took in one year, we could either use previous
surplus’ to cover the difference, or else just borrow it. The total budget of
the US was so small that it didn’t really matter. Each bureau of the government
figured out how much it needed to spend to accomplish its duties for itself,
and Congress generally gave them what they needed. Could you imagine if our
bureaucracy today tried that?

Anyway, after WWI increased spending significantly, it
became clear that some central authority needed to keep track of all this and tell Congress how much total money they had to spend in any
given year. This was called “central clearance power”, and Congress granted it
to this tiny office called the Bureau of the Budget. This Bureau was safely tucked away into the
Department of the Treasury, away from Presidential authority. After all, the constitution
explicitly grants the power of the purse to Congress.

But Roosevelt didn’t like that. He wanted that power for
himself, because he recognized it would be a useful tool in allocating
funds to his New Deal programs. FDR eagerly sought a way to justify assuming control of this Bureau. What he
found was an obscure constitutional law that granted the president exactly six
additional staff members. So what did he do? He hired himself thousands of
additional staff members at taxpayer expense, saying that it was within the
spirit of the law because the overall purpose was to grant him more staffing flexibility. Hey, each of
those six staff members probably need their own staff, right? Nobody challenged him on this. He then created from
among these staffers something called the Executive Office of the President, or
EOP. Nobody had authorized him to do this either, but since nobody really saw the harm in
it, and nobody wanted to stand in the way of a popular president over such a
trivial matter. This office couldn’t do anything other than Roosevelt himself
could do, right?

Wrong. In 1936, a few years after he’d gotten away with this
and when he was at the peak of his power, Roosevelt issued another “executive
order” which simply placed the Bureau of the Budget inside the EOP! He literally just
wrote himself the power to set the budget. Congress was rightfully
outraged, but what could they do? Roosevelt led the executive branch, and the
executive branch held the gun. They couldn’t move for impeachment or anything
else, because the people loved him. They had no choice but to let it go, and
the Office of Management and Budget has been under presidential control ever
since. This is why presidents today are expected to propose budgets for the
upcoming fiscal year, even though the constitution explicitly grants this power
to Congress.

That wasn’t the only “executive order” Roosevelt issued. He
use another one to forcibly close all of the banks in the country, in what is
today referred to as the “bank holiday” to prevent a feared run on the banks.
He justified this power by saying it was a “state of emergency”, which to him meant he
was justified in doing whatever he liked. Historically, a state of emergency
was pursuant only to a Congressional declaration of war. But FDR argued that there
were lots of emergencies that weren’t war related. So, he pressured Congress
into revising a totally unrelated bill (which had banned trade with axis powers during WWI) to
include the president’s ability to declare similar “economic emergencies." These emergencies could be declared by the president at any time, and during those declarations, the president could mandate practically anything via executive
order.

***

The President's Precedent

Prior to Roosevelt’s presidency, these executive orders
didn’t really exist (with the exception of the Louisiana Purchase 130 years
before). If they were used, it was an order about how to enforce a law which
Congress had written, not just a random command that is to be followed simply
because the president wants it to be. The whole concept of an executive order
is rather contrary to the system of checks and balances in the constitution.
The framers enumerated the powers of each branch to avoid just such a system.
But Roosevelt despised these checks. He loathed the idea that anybody else
could tell him what he could or couldn’t do. He governed with the motto
that “I’ll mandate the law, and dare them to overrule it”. And due to the Great Depression, nobody was willing or able to do so.

Roosevelt was reelected three times. It may have been more had he not died before his fifth attempt. This sent every future president the message that if you want to stay in power, it helps to behave as FDR did.

So naturally, other presidents have followed into his
footsteps. Today, executive orders are stretched far and wide to include just about anything the president feels like doing. President
Clinton that placed 6,000 acres of Western land off limits for development via
executive order, citing his authority to do so from a law passed by Congress for the preservation of a very specific area...IN 1880!!! President
Reagan struck down any federal regulation that he didn’t like by citing the
Paperwork Production Act, which had been made by Congress to limit the amount
of forms businessmen had to fill out (not the actual number of rules they had
to comply with). This would have been unthinkable when the constitution was
created, but since Roosevelt set the tone that this was acceptable, other
ambitious presidents have been quick to use it to advance their agenda.

Similarly, the constitution specifically requires the president to get the Senate's approval before making any treaties with other countries. But of course, FDR believed that only he should have that power. I
suppose he figured this was just one giant constitutional typo where the framers accidentally included an entire sentence that they didn't really mean. So to get around their unfortunate blunder, he simply
changed the word "treaty" to the word "agreement". Hey, the constitution says
nothing about “agreements”, right? So Roosevelt began negotiating “agreements”
with other countries, rather than treaties, without any congressional approval whatsoever!

Naturally, Congress was again outraged, and this practice
soon found its way to the Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court was very hesitant to challenge the president in these times - partially due to the war, and partially because most of them were his appointees by this time anyway. So in a move that can only be described as cowardly, the courts supported Roosevelt's interpretation. They cited the fact that congress could
pass legislation to overturn these agreements as a sufficient constitutional
check on the President’s negotiating power. But the president could still veto
that legislation just as he can veto any others! The result is that today,
Congress needs a veto proof, two-thirds majority in both houses to prevent the president from
entering the United States into any contract he so chooses, rather than the president needing two-thirds concurrence in the Senate to have any power at all.

This is why we have so few treaties today, and so many
agreements (the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, is one example).
There are also dozens of secret agreements, which the president conceals from
Congress because he fears they would be overturned. Congress tried to address
this problem by passing the CASE Act, which stipulates that all “executive
agreements” be presented to Congress by years end. How did presidents get
around that? By simply changing the word again! Now they call them National
Security Directives, or NSD’s. Bush used one such secret NSD to authorize the
waterboarding of suspected terrorists (which is completely unrelated to making "treaties" anyway!). When one of those directive’s leaked to
the press, he issued another one authorizing “extraordinary rendition”,
codename for taking suspects outside the country and doing the same thing. Hey,
if Roosevelt (who everyone knows was one of the best presidents ever) can do
it, why can’t I?

The executive orders didn’t stop there. In 1942, the infamous
Executive Order 9066 authorized the establishment of “exclusion zones” where
people who were deemed a threat to the United States’ war effort could be
contained. These are today known as the Japanese Internment Camps, one of the
most shameful government actions in American history. FDR’s Vice President and successor,
Harry Truman, cited the same emergency power to send troops into Korea without
Congress’ permission, effectively wrenching the power to declare war away from
Congress as well. It was done on the order of one man, free from any power
restraints or constitutional checks whatsoever. And it was all started by FDR.

***

Hoodwinking the Desperate

How did he get away with this, one may ask? Why didn’t
anybody cry foul? Why were the checks and balances in the constitution ignored?
The simple answer is that the guardians of that constitution are less strong, and have
less resolve, in times of confusion and desperation. The Great Depression was
one such time, and Franklin D. Roosevelt brilliantly capitalized on this
opportunity. People’s defenses are weak when they’re hungry, out-of-work, and
scared for the future. When somebody promises you food, a job, camaraderie, and
security in such conditions, people are eager to accept. The freedom they must sacrifice to do so seems less pressing, especially when you're paying with someone else's freedom instead of your own. And when the power of the
presidency is expanded with the justification of “taking emergency action” to
address the problem, people are willing to tolerate that expansion. Roosevelt
ran his campaign on this message, and found a people very eager to grant him
whatever power he needed to improve their desperate condition.

But even Depression-era circumstances were not large enough
to cover up these power grabs on their own. To get away with this heist,
Roosevelt need to cover it up. So just like any good dictator, he presented
people with only the information he wanted them to hear. FDR was an absolute
master of media manipulation, and he invented most of the tactics that
presidents use today.

One way he did this was by buying off newspaper reporters.
When FDR entered office, the front-offices of most big-city newspapers opposed
him. So Roosevelt cunningly went around them and targeted the reporters
themselves. He played poker with them, let them ride on the presidential train,
and did all sorts of wining and dining with them to get them on his side.
Nobody had ever done this before, and the lowly reporters who never got any
attention loved it. More importantly, he’d promise them invaluable “scoops”
about upcoming decisions and events, but only on the condition that they
promised to report on those scoops in a way that showed him in a favorable
light. Whichever reporters wrote the stories he approved of most would be first
in line for the next scoop. At the time, this was incredibly valuable
information, because information travelled much more slowly. Being in the know
first could mean your newspapers stories
were full day ahead of your competitors, which obviously would win you more
business. Some papers were even known to hire unemployed mobsters left over from
Prohibition as hit men on other reporters, so that they could get the scoops
first! Imagine, then, how much they’d be willing to bias the article if that
meant getting first dibs on a hot new lead.

Sometimes, Roosevelt could even write the stories himself,
or have a member on his staff write it for him. He did this through press
releases, which he was the first president to truly utilize. These were
prewritten news announcements that would be released only to whichever
newspaper promised to publish it in full, unadulterated format. Naturally, they
were biased towards the president (just as they are today), so this posed a
predicament to newspaper editors. Either publish the biased stories as are and
make a lot of money, or stick to the principle of unbiased reporting. You can
guess which they chose (to be fair, one notable exception was the Chicago
Tribune, AKA the McCormack Papers, which did hold out against the bribes).

FDR also made use of frequent news reels. When you went to
the movies in those days, you’d see two feature films, some commercials, and a
10-minute news reel. But these news reels were created and inserted by the
government! The amount of bias in these news reels would be utterly laughable
by today’s standards (which is saying something because today’s media standards
aren’t particularly high). They displayed Roosevelt as the center of
everything. Even in the movies themselves, the actors were always incredibly
reverent of “the president!”, and every idea he proposed was hailed as heroic
and compassionate. It was like presidential product placement. One film even
used synchronized swimmers to spell out FDR in a pool!

But the most famous way that Roosevelt influenced public
opinion was through his utilization of the radio. The president’s frequent
“fireside chats” conveyed the impression that he was coming right into your
living room to talk to you. Decades later, people who heard those chats still
remember the soothing, assuring feeling he gave them as he assured them that
somebody in Washington was doing something to ease their troubles.

It didn’t much matter what he happened to be doing, so long
as he convinced people that it was for them. Nearly all of the New Deal
programs were built on this brilliant but unconstitutional strategy: if you
give people whatever they want at taxpayer expense, they will vote for you.
Unemployed? Here, take a job at the Works Progress Administration. Elderly or
poor? Here, I’ll give you some social security money. Energy worker? Come work
at the TVA. Farmer? Here, take some farm subsidies. In fact, take some money
not to work, and to pour milk down the drain and kill your pigs early, to
prevent the price of food from going down for the other farmers. Artist? Come
join the New Deal Painters Project. Or the New Deal Writers Project, or the New
Deal Poets Project. People were literally paid to write odes to America, many
probably about how good Roosevelt himself was! He could promise you a job,
security, camaraderie, a feeling of service and inclusion and membership, he
could promise you the sun and the moon at someone else’s expense – so long as you vote for me!!! Government
had never offered that before, and people were too poor to ask questions about
why it was doing it now. No wonder he was viewed as a savior!

***

Packing the Court

Of course, the reason government had never offered it before was because it was all unconstitutional in the first place. But after a
while, Roosevelt’s power and popularity grew to such an extent that he could
overtake the last the remaining guardians of that constitution, the last remaining
barrier between him and total control. That barrier was the Supreme Court.

For years, they really did hold out. For years the
conservative majority on the court stood up to Roosevelt’s bullying and exposed his unconstitutional power grabs for what they were. This enraged him. Roosevelt repeatedly berated the Supreme Court in his fireside chats, referring to them in one speech as “nine old men” that he wouldn’t let stand in
his way. As he gained popularity and momentum, he moved in for the kill. On
February 5th, 1937, he introduced the Judicial Procedures Reform
Bill. The bill granted the president the power to appoint a new Supreme Court
justice for each member of the court that exceeded 70 years and 6 months in age
(up to a maximum of six). A month later on March 9th, he made the
plan the topic of one of his fireside chats, pleading the case for Americans to
let him pack the courts with as many new justices as he desired so that he
could get his way.

Even by FDR's brash standards, this was a bold and daring move. Never before in American history had there been a more transparent attempt to manipulate the system of checks and balances for personal gain. But in the end, it worked; not because Roosevelt's absurd law passed, but because the Supreme Court caved under the pressure of having their legitimacy annihilated. Twenty days after Roosevelt's speech, the Supreme Court published a decision
approving a Washington state minimum wage law by a 5-4 vote. Conservative
justice Owen J. Roberts, who’d previously voted against most New Deal
initiatives as unconstitutional, had switched sides. He continued his 180
degree about face in most future votes as well (with the notable exception of
the Japanese Internment camp issue). Outraged at the politics entering the supposedly non-partisan court, conservative justice Willis Van Devanter resigned, allowing his replacement to be nominated by Roosevelt. When another anti-New Deal justice died
later that year, Roosevelt’s majority was solidified. The court packing
plan was rebuked by Congress and the American people for its
blatant abuse of power, but it didn’t matter. Roosevelt had successfully bullied
the Supreme Court into compliance with his agenda.

Even more damaging to our Republic were the many Justices
Roosevelt appointed over the next eight years, which continued to advocate his
“the government can do anything” attitude long after his presidency ended. Because he was elected to four terms in office, Roosevelt had nominated all of the justices on the
Supreme Court by the time of his death. And by the time the most damaging event of Roosevelt’s entire
presidency came to pass, they were all his nominees. That time was 1942, and
the case was Wickard vs. Filburn.

***

The Day the Liberty Died

Wickard vs.
Filburn is the most cited Supreme Court of all time. More future Supreme Court
decisions have been influenced by this decision than any other, and the
implications of the ruling are far reaching to this day. The specific part of
the New Deal which prompted the Wickard ruling was called the Agricultural
Adjustment Act. In an attempt to end the recession by keeping food prices high to enhance farm profits, this law restricted the supply of food by limiting
how much produce farmers were allowed to grow. Each county would distribute
licenses to farmers granting them permission to grow crops on a certain acreage
of land. A wheat farmer named Roscoe Filburn had all of his fields licensed except for a
small plot of land adjacent to his home, on which he grew food for
his family's personal consumption. When the government found out about this, they fined him for violating the law,
and he took the law to court. The Supreme Court was asked to decide if banning
Mr. Filburn from growing crops to eat himself fell within Congress’s
constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.

To me, and to
most people, the answer seems a clear cut no. Mr. Filburn was not engaged in
interstate commerce. Commerce is defined as economic trade, and he was not trading the
wheat in question with anybody. Not only was he not engaged in interstate commerce, but he wasn’t engaged in
any commerce at all. But in 1942, the Supreme Court was full of Roosevelt’s
appointees, and striking down one of his laws seemed simply out of the
question. So the court bent over backwards to keep the law intact. They argued
that the “principle of abrogation” meant that even though the wheat being
regulated was not part of interstate commerce itself, his decision NOT to sell
it could still have a ripple effect on other interstate commerce, because that
is less wheat that he would have to buy from somebody else, which would decrease
the demand and lower the price. Therefore, it affected interstate commerce, and
therefore it could be regulated.

While I
recognize my bias, I don’t know how any person can read that logic with a
straight face. If the ability to regulate interstate commerce includes the
ability to regulate anything that remotely affects any commerce at all, then
Congress’ power is unlimited, because everything
affects commerce. Everything costs money, and every behavior might conceivably
impose some cost on somebody somewhere down the line. It is against the very
purpose of a constitution with enumerated powers, against the entire concept of
limited government, to have a one power that has no limit, which can be cited
to justify absolutely anything. But that was the way Roosevelt wanted it, and
so that’s what the court did.

In every
subsequent legal challenge to a constitutional action that the government took
citing the commerce clause over the next 50 years, the power was protected
citing the precedent of Wickard vs. Filburn. Not until US vs. Lopez in 1995,
when the government tried to encroach on the second amendment via the commerce
clause because guns cost money, did the court say enough was enough. The Great
Society, the massive growth of bureaucracy, the creation of entire executive
departments, the assumption of massive debt to pay for all these programs, I
could go on an on; all were deemed constitutional only because the government
could simply yell “commerce clause!” before it acted. In other words, all were
possible only because FDR did it first.

Crippling the Courts

Even when FDR’s court’s died out and new
justices were appointed, they found it very difficult to strike down these
presidential power grabs. Rather, by placing limits on powers which didn’t
exist, they actually served to legitimize other powers by not explicitly
banning them!

One example is the so called “executive privilege” cited by
Nixon during the Watergate scandal. He claimed he didn’t have to turn over those tapes because of “executive privilege." Prior to then, the only known instance of that phrase being applied was when President Washington tried to protect a General from questioning during the Indian Wars. But when the
Supreme Court tried to restrict this power, they wrote that “although the
principle of executive privilege is well known”, it doesn’t apply here. Why was
it well known? It had never existed before! It’s nowhere to be found in the
constitution! By limiting a power that didn’t exist, the Courts set a legal
precedent that the power does in fact exist. The same occurred with President
Bush and the power he claimed to designate people as “enemy combatants”, which
could be tortured. The Court ruled that enemy combatants had rights and could
be tortured, but in doing so legitimized the president’s power to declare
somebody as an enemy combatant in the first place.

All of this originates
back to FDR. In the seventy years after FDR, the courts have feared direct
conflict with the president, because he nominates them and he has the gun! FDR
threatened to pack the court or just ignore it, and then appointed justices who
established precedent over his four terms. By the time Eisenhower took office,
courts had been full of Roosevelt/Truman appointees for 20 years! Even the
conservatives that have been nominated since don’t want to issue rulings that break from those 20 years of unlimited-government precedent. They are worried that if thy do, the executive may ignore and circumvent their rulings. And if that happened, it would set the precedent
that they can be ignored and circumvented.

The result is
that generations of ambitious presidents have each pushed their power just a
little bit, and the court has been fearful to be
stickler’s for such borderline cases. But after a few generations those powers
have been expanded a lot, and each president appoints judges willing to condone
the minor power grabs of the former. By the time it becomes clear that massive
power grabs have occurred, the courts are so fearful of enacting such a radical
departure from the status quo that they don’t stand up to the power grab of the
originals. So they either draw a line slightly beneath what the president has
most recently assumed (but greatly above what the constitution actually
authorized), or just permit all of it. None of that happened before FDR.

***

Conclusion

In conclusion, no other president carried as much disdain
and flippant disregard for the constitution than FDR, and no president
dismissively broke its rules more frequently. By doing so he set the precedent
that the executive branch, charged to enforce the rulings of the other two,
could actually just enforce whatever it liked, a notion which greatly restricts
freedom in this country to this day. When compared to the job the constitution
authorizes him to do, the job he did was further off the mark than any other
president in American history. Therefore, he was our worst president. Perhaps
Obama’s comparison wasn’t so far off the mark after all.

...
(Author’s note: Much information in this essay were presented to me by Professor Benjamin Ginsberg in a series of lectures at Johns Hopkins University. The research is all his, and I do not claim it as my own. Only the implications I draw from that research, and the opinions I express regarding those implications about President Roosevelt, are my own.)

Sorry, but this is only a matter of opinion. And believe me, I will gladly listen to people like David McCullough when it comes to our American Presidents and their biographies. I respect Mr. McCullough and his opinions regarding FDR far higher than I would anyone else.

I disagree with this article so much with the fact that FDR set the wrong principles and foundations for our country. My knowledge leads me to believe that everything FDR sought out to do, he finished it. The only reason you could debate this article would be to say that he served more than 2 terms unlike every other president. WRONG! The reason behind why he sought out to do 4 terms was because from what he was doing, was satifying every American opinion along with him. The Great Depression wasn't FDR's fault if you use logical and common sense.

You totally missed the point in the article. It doesn't matter if the president does what is popular with the people or satisfies "every American opinion" if the constitution doesn't give the congress and president the power to do something, they can't do it, no matter how popular or wanted it may be with the people. That's the whole point. What's popular isn't always legal. Same with Obama and many of the things he does today, as well as all the other modern presidents.

I actually sort of agree with you haha, which is why I opened it with the quote apologizing for length. I didn't have time to write a tight, organized essay, I just had a lot of thoughts in my head so I jotted them all down. So yes, it rambles, and stylistically it's not my best. But I think the content is good.

I just finished three books on FDR, and they agree entirely with what Andrew has said. I had come to the conclusion that FDR, holy saint of the liberals, was a criminal and of course our worst president by far.

"Everything FDR set out to do, he finished it." Okay...why does that make the things he did good?

"The reason behind why he sought out to do 4 terms was because from what he was doing, was satisfying every American opinion along with him." - Very wrong. He was satisfying about 60-65% of the Americans at his peak. That is called "tyranny of the majority."

I think the person misspoke he wrote "every" American opnion. In any case, the majority (at best) is what runs things.I think the point is that America was willing to vote for him for four terms... just like NYC was willing to vote for Bloomberg for a third term.

This article was deduced & written by Mixed up misguided americans... We pay congress & senate to argue, with lifetime heathcare etc. Etc. perks... All those minds will never agree on anything! its the human element of stubborn ignorance! FDR (democrat) started tax & social security withdrawel in Aug.1935,an indispensible program/genius...just like Obama's ACA of today... Majority does rule...thats why obama was re- elected &FDR×4 or the civil war outcome...duh Greed is what must be overcome, now by the largest mass of voters/amricans! Just like the "SOCIALIST" Ponzi~scheme social security program...time will bring the ACA's problem's to common $ ground with the millions of americans given the "right's" of health care! FDR was right, despite the lack of republican foresight in '35 as they are today with thier kindergarden ~tantrum GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWNS! The people have spoken...hehe get over it & start building Obama a MONUMENT...😅

I agree with the article, but I differ in your treatment of Lincoln as a tremendous President. If you look at his actions closely including his suspension of habeas corpus, you will see that he was a dictatorial tyrant and power grabber as well. I would recommend that you check out some books on the issue by Judge Andrew Napolitano.

I'm getting to Lincoln in one of my upcoming posts, I took an entire class on him this past semester and he was actually reverant on the constitution and cited it for almost everything he did, yes he went too far but I'll give my reasons for why I still like him and how his overall philosophy is beneficial for liberty in the essay.

Lincoln's actions in time of war we're completely within the boundaries of the Constitution. When we look back on history we tend to shall only judge actions by today's standards, but living during those time would have provided more accurate perspective.

I'm probably old enough to be the grannie of everyone here. I strongly suggest that you keep on researching the periods of the Depression and WWII. Millions of people in the US were saved from death during the Depression by FDR. Veterans were homeless and starving because of the irresponsibility the selfish, reckless Wall Street investors and banks of the 1920s and Hoover's refusal even to give veterans what the government had promised them. The degree of documented poverty in the US in the 1930s was so great that it boggles the mind. The notion that the laissez faire economists would have made it all better is sheer ignorance of economic history.

The fact that spoiled young people of today cannot even imagine that bone-shattering poverty is due in great measure to the effect of FDR's efforts on the subsequent half a century. About 80+ percent of the US population does not want to end the protective social programs FDR put in place. The pay of all ununionized labor and ununionized labor's working conditions were vastly improved by the unionized labor that he supported.

FDR was a brilliant leader in WWII. In contrast, his opponents in the late 30s included Nazi sympathizers. I shudder in horror to imagine what the positions of women and African Americans would be today in the US and the world if FDR had never had not been president.

Roosevelt actually created shortages in the food available to Americans at that time by paying farmers to destroy their crops in an attempt to price fix. This in turned worsened hunger and food shortages.

Unions may have done some good at that time but today they have obtained too much power and are very detrimental to our country with their current demands. The work place is safe; therefore we need them no longer.

As a young middle class woman I would love to end social security. I believe in taking care of myself and planning for my own future. Taking care of the poor should be the job of churches and charities NOT the government. The government is very ineffective at taking care of those who need the most help. These programs just encourage people to remain helpless and dependent.

The Social Security program was established to provide "security" in retirement. It is no accident at the inception of this "wonderful" program that the age selected was well past the known life span of individuals. This "wonderful" program was a way to take money from people without their consent to help others. Not necessarily bad per se, however there was no true intent of helping people in "their old age." That is why the program continues to teeter on bankruptcy.

Gary, I too oppose the excessive spending and wasteful, counterproductive foreign policy of President Bush. But the president which first allowed Social Security funds to be used for other purposes in the general treasury was not Bush - I believe it was liberal hero Lyndon B Johnson.

"The notion that the laissez faire economists would have made it all better is sheer ignorance of economic history." Right. And enlightened bureaucrats know better than the free markets. Just an FYI, there was nothing laissez faire about the economic policies that led to the Great Depression (Smoot-Hawley, NRA, burning crops, gold confiscation.) And oh yeah, if people were starving, then why was FDR burning wheat and slaughtering livestock to artificially adjust food prices? That seems laissez faire to you? Your problem is your another brainwashed fool who thinks some moron in Washington actually cares about you. I hope you enjoyed a decade living in poverty listening to FDR's radio addresses about how his bureaucratic programs were "helping you." I'm not really sure he was a great war time leader, either. Abandoning Poland. Ignoring the holocaust. Being way toO friendly with Stalin. Putting Americans of Japanese decent into internment camps. Wow. Yeah, great president!!

I agree with the blog that FDR was the worst president ever for his abuse of power. He would not have needed to "save" people from poverty if he did not create it in the first place with bad economic policy.

The irony is that liberals blame Hoover for creating the depression and credit FDR for ending it. WRONG! Hoover's policies started the depression and FDR's policies expanded it. Even FDR's administration later admitted that his policies were "an expansion of Hoover's".

It is a fact that the economy was no better at the end of FDR's second term than it was at the beginning of his presidency. So had he followed the 2-term precedent, he would have left office after 8 years without getting the economy out of the depression, which would have resulted in him being considered a miserable failure. The economy only improved after the war took FDR's attention away from messing up the economy, and the biggest reason that it recovered after the war is that FDR died and Truman did not have the guile to force his will on the congress. The Revenue Act of 1945 undid some of the high taxes and regulations imposed by FDR, and the economy finally breathed some fresh air.

As to being a smart war president? While he was slick and generally outsmarted those around him, Stalin made a fool out of him. When Stalin played hard to meet with in person, FDR agreed to meet in Tehran at the Soviet embassy, where Stalin had the place bugged and picked up everything he needed to know about his bargaining power with the US. Basically, FDR was willing to concede Poland and Eastern Europe as long as the USSR joined the UN. If once was not bad enough, FDR was dumb enough to meet Stalin in Yalta and be bugged again. The irony is that FDR illegally spied on his political enemies (and even friends) under the ruse that this was for "national security", so you would think that he would have known better.

Very true about FDR's policies being an expansion of Hoovers. Also an interesting contribution with the bugged meeting story, I didn't know that. Stalin is not somebody you want to play hardball with haha. For all we rag on FDR on this page, Stalin made him look like a Saint.

The comment from the "grannie" is silly, and she's the one who needs to do her research. If you disagree with free market principles, it's fair to call me misguided; it is unfair to call me spoiled, as that's a personal attack which has nothing to do with wise economic policy. Her age is also completely irrelevant, unless she is over 90 years old, because nobody under 90 can accurately remember what things were like in the Great Depression. The Great Depression started 80 years ago, and nobody under 10 can follow the news on their own and form unbiased opinions about such complex issues. Considering most people over 90 years old aren't trolling the comments on political blogs, she probably just remembers what her parents told her, which makes her no more qualified from a first-person perspective than I am.

Due to the high volume of traffic on this post, I made some edits to enhance readability. The original version was just me ranting on one January afternoon, so hopefully these edits will make the actual content of my rant more organized and cohesive.

If it wasn't for Woodrow Wilson and his Federal Reserve, there would not have been a depression. Ben Bernake admitted that himself in a speech in 2002 at a conference to honor the great economist Milton Friedman. And if not for FDR we would not have had a great depression. His polices prolonged the depression as he inhibited economic growth. He thought that competition was to blame for the troubles. You get out of a depression by encouraging economic growth not strangling it. (read about Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon for proof of that)

I think everyone would agree you get out of a depression by encouraging growth haha, the question is just how to do that. However I agree that he prolonged it, and also agree that early mismanagement and ignorance of monetary policy played a role, and that's part of why the great economist FA Hayek predicted the collapse during the 20's (while John Maynard Keynes was blindsided by it).

FDR worst president ever? I think you forgot about President Bush? Bush was the worst president in history hands down. When Clinton left office we were in a 236 billion dollar surplus. In Oct. 26th 2001 Bush signed the Patriot Act, giving away certain freedoms, because it "Was essential to winning the war on terror" You can never win a War on terror, for the simple fact that terror is an emotion. Then FOR THE FIRST TIME IN AMERICAN HISTORY HE SIGNS WARTIME TAX CUTS. Which adds 2 trillion in debt while he was in office, and the following decade an additional 4 trillion. Then he invades the wrong country, costing 4,500 troops and the taxpayers well over a trillion dollars. Then in 2006 at the Peak of the housing bubble by Wall-Street gambling. Bush and republicans assure us (as always) that Wall-Street can "regulate itself" and that Regulations are "job-killers". Between 2007 and 2009 8.8 million Americans lose their jobs in the worst economic crash since the Great Depression, mostly due to the giant Wall Street poker game and the related housing bubble enabled by the laissez-faire economic ideas of "conservative" Republicans. If you believe that FDR is a worse President than Bush. You have your Heads way up your asses. Imagine a U.S. President Standing under a Mission Accomplished Banner, Telling us that the Iraq war was a success, first of all there was no point in going to iraq, no weapons of mass destruction, trillions lost, thousands of troops gone, iraq is at its most unstable state ever. YET HE SAYS MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. GWB is the worst president hands down.

Bush was a bad president, and he did abuse the constitution as well. But he was not the worst, because he didn't really abuse it in any new ways that other presidents hadn't already done before him, and didn't set the precedent that doing so was okay in the future. I'll address your ancillary concerns in the order you presented them.

1. Yes, the Patriot Act was a bad idea and a needless, fear induced power grab. It was giving the terrorists what they wanted; by sacrificing our freedoms for security, they successfully wielded terror to weaken our nation.

2. I have no problem with the tax cuts. I have a problem with the big spending. Spending causes debt. Taxes never do. Not taxing is not an action, it is inaction. Spending is the guilty activity.

3. He invaded a different country for different reasons. It was a bad move, but it wasn't the "wrong" country. You say that as if he didn't know which country the "bad guys" were actually in.

4. Bush was not to blame for the housing crisis. He played little role in the federal reserve's policy, and the collapse was not brought about by too little government involvement, but too much. It's pretty funny to hear people blame laissez-faire for the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - two GOVERNMENT entities!

5. Iraq is not in it's most unstable state ever. It is far better off today than it was under Saddam. Also, the troop surge worked at reducing violence. You can feel the war was unwise and immoral, and those are separate debates, but don't pretend living under a ruthless, violent dictator was better than living in a turbulent but relatively free democracy.

Plus Bush never forced anyone to fight his wars. FDR reintroduced slavery (the draft) and forced people against their will to fight his war and he lied to the public. His oil embargoes are what caused the Japanese to attack us.

Very impressed with your knowledge of the subject, and your insight as a young adult. Back in my day, we were taught that he was the best President in our recent history. As we now know, we were just being indoctrinated. Now as a thinking adult; I totally agree with your assessment of FDR, his dictatorial style, and his dismantling of the Constitution. Keep up the good work my friend!

Thanks for the compliments! Glad to hear it's not just young people in the liberty movement (you were taught FDR was the best president in RECENT history, eh?), but those who are young at heart as well!

Just read this article. Couldn't agree more about FDR. They taught me growing up going to public schools that he was our best president ever. Completely the opposite of what he actually was. On the other hand, I disagree that Lincoln was a bit better than him. He alone destroyed states rights and changed our country from a Republic to the majority rule Democracy we have today. I get disgusted when people defend him and tell me " but he freed the slaves!!". People being so uninformed about history when we have this great invention of the internet is ridiculous and ignorant to me. If the internet was around when Lincoln/FDR was president, we wouldn't be in the complete mess we are today. Have to throw Obama into this mix too as some of his current policies are surely going to destroy the nation within the next ten years or so. Why isn't Ron Paul president?

I'm getting to Lincoln in one of my upcoming posts. I took an entire class on him last year so I'm aware of his criticisms, but based on my readings of his I believe he was actually reverent of the constitution, because he cited it for almost everything he did. Yes, in some places he went too far, but in my post I'll give my reasons for why I still like him and how I believe his overall philosophy was and is beneficial for the cause of liberty.